


if it's meant to be

by tryslora



Category: Welcome to PHU Series - Tris Lawrence
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, F/M, Found Family, Magic, Teleportation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: More than a decade ago, Kenzie Davis fell off the bars during an internationally televised gymnastics event and instinctively Teleported to save herself, creating an event known as the Emergence and letting the world know that Magic is real. A few years later, she ran away and joined the circus, recreating herself as Mac Palmer, the girl behind the persona of The Amazing Adelaide.OR: The one where Mac never went into the military, and Pawel didn't become the foremost expert on Talent, and somehow, they still met because Mac flies on the trapeze, and Conor has more Magic than his body can hold.





	if it's meant to be

**Author's Note:**

> I went to The BigE. I saw the small circus. I watched the solo trapeze act and thought about it. I watched the quick change magic act and thought about it. Then I came home thinking about Mac and well, next thing I knew I was writing this fic. 
> 
> I don't think it's a secret that I ship Mac & Pawel SO MUCH despite the fact that I know that they will never get together in canon. It's kind of fun to poke at their friendship in different ways. And this version of Mac is super different from the one who has PTSD, so... yeah. It was fun.

Mac didn’t intend to run away and join the circus, but oh look, here she is.

It’s nice, because circus people don’t ask questions, not even when she showed up almost a decade ago at the age of fifteen, bedraggled and wet and needing a place to stay. It’s a community of people who have come together to make their own space, and their own way, and so many of them are Talented.

She’s sure they know who she is, but not a single one of them has ever said a word. Several of them have helped her change her image over the years, ensuring that the Amazing Adelaide could never be mistaken for Kenzie Davis, the girl who outed magic to the world.

She’s safe here, even with hundreds of people staring at her for three performances a day, seven days a week. Even with all those eyes watching and waiting for her to fall… she’s safe.

She waits in the back as the opening music plays and the MC’s voice booms from everywhere and nowhere, filling the small tent. Children on bleachers look around, their small hands holding tightly on to their parents, eyes alight with awe.

Jack’s great at what he does, the perfect MC with no need for technology to amplify his voice. He holds this audience in the palm of his hands without them ever seeing his face.

One of the stagehands holds Mac’s trapeze steady where it hangs in the center of the ring. Mac raises a hand, and he nods; she walks out, head held high, gauzy cape billowing behind her. It’s attached only at her wrists, loose enough that it can’t trip her, easy enough to let go of at the right moment in the show.

Because it’s all about the show.

She stands beneath the trapeze, letting the stagehand make a show of using a carabiner to clip the belay line to her waist. She turns in place, waving to the audience, mocking frustration when the line catches in her cape. She wraps one hand around the line, and the stagehand retreats, holding on to the other end of the line, pulling her up into the air until she can catch the trapeze and stand on it.

The lights sparkle off the rhinestones on her costume, creating rainbows in the air that highlight her dark skin. She shakes her head to show off the rainbow highlights, bright at the ends of natural hair that frames her face.

It’s show time.

The stagehand uses a line to pull the trapeze and start her swinging, then she kicks the line free. It’s easy to get the trapeze swinging until she’s almost parallel to the ground at the highest point on either side. Little gasps and yells fill the air, and she knows she has them in the palm of her hand. She waits until she swings forward, then releases the cape from her wrists so that it flies out behind her.

The audience cries out before they realize that it was only the cape falling through the air, not her.

This first part of the show is easy. When she reaches the highest point, she jumps and twists in space, as if it were a high bar in place on the ground, rather than a swinging trapeze. Each time she does higher and higher flips, returningjust in time to catch the bar. If she’s off a little, it doesn’t matter—a tiny bit of Teleportation gets her there without anyone being the wiser.

It’s easy when it comes to the tricks, but it’s still a workout. She’s breathing hard as the music slows, and she sits on the trapeze, kicking her feet to keep it swinging. She needs her rest, but that’s okay, Jack needs time to talk this up.

“The Amazing Adelaide will now perform a feat never before seen by a live audience!” Jack’s voice booms, then lowers to an awed hush. “Before your very eyes, she will perform a triple twist on her own, with no catcher. And she will do this not just once, but twice—once for each side of the audience.”

There’s chatter and catcalls. Cut off yells, and children begging to know if this is real. She hears one boy yelling, “Dad!” loudly before she tunes them all out.

She’s safe, yes, but she does need focus. This next part is the trickiest.

She hangs from the bar as she swings, reaching the highest arc. The carabiner is heavy at her waist, a reminder that this little bit is the worst. This is where she has to rely on something other than herself,

She launches herself into the air, rotating sideways at the same time as she somersaults. She finishes the third twist and just barely reaches the trapeze, scrambling for it with her fingertips while the belay line visible pulls her back.

She manages to scramble up while the crowd roars beneath her. She hates that part, where she has to let the line almost make her fall.

“Adelaide!” Jack calls out.

She waves a hand.

“Are you okay?”

She makes a face, trying to be as obvious as possible. She reaches for the carabiner, yanks on it.

A soft sound of distress from Jack. “Was it the line? Did it get in your way?” he asks, voice theatrically hushed as if it’s just the two of them, and the entire audience can’t hear. When she reaches for the carabiner, he raises his voice again, “You can’t take that off, Adelaide! It’s the only thing that stands between you and falling! What if you miss?”

She resolutely clicks the carabiner open and holds it up.

“But you almost missed!” he yells.

She drops it to the floor and begins swinging faster than before, lowering herself to hang from the bar again.

This is the real trick. This part is the entire point of her performance. Everything up until now was faked. It was good, yes, but it wasn’t what she can really do. Simple aerial gymnastics, and nothing more.

This trick is her favorite, because she can’t fall.

That’s what made her famous after all. She didn’t fall then and she has never fallen since.

She has to launch herself into the air just before the highest point, trusting that the trapeze will continue on its trajectory, rising while she flips and twists, then falling back to where her hands are. She comes out of the spin, and there it is, right under her hands. She wraps them around the bar and lets it carry her to the other side as the audience screams and applauds.

She swings back and forth, pumping with her legs and building up momentum quickly before she repeats it for the other half of the audience.

Release. Twist and tumble. Turn—

Shit, she’s off. It’s okay, she’ll just—

Something shoves at her from behind, pushing her into the bar and the bar into her. She grabs it roughly, scrambling to hold onto it, Teleporting just enough to give herself a little distance to smooth out the landing.

That wasn’t her.

That was magic, she thinks, and it definitely wasn’t her.

She flips when she reaches the midpoint, not caring that Jack hasn’t announced her dismount. She needs to get down before someone does that again, pushes her to the point where she can’t correct and she misses.

For the first time, she thinks maybe it is actually possible to fall.

She tumbles in the air, using tiny bursts of Teleportation to raise herself up again and slow her descent. It’s all invisible to the eye and will look like a trick with the strobing light in the tent, but it helps her.

She sticks the landing and poses, then waves excitedly to the audience. She blows kisses as they scream, and escapes to the back as quickly as she can.

Lana catches her as she stumbles into the back. The clowns pass her, while Lana holds her up, inspects her. “Are you okay? What was that?”

“Someone Talented is in the audience.” Mac looks back at the curtain. Now that she’s down and can breathe more easily, she thinks she knows what happened. “I think they tried to save me.”

“Stupid marks.” Lana runs her hands over Mac’s arms, then pats her face. “You’re fine on your own. Better than fine.” Her voice is low and soft and concern is quickly hidden beneath familiar flirtation.

“Still not interested, but thanks.” Mac kisses her cheek, then shoves her toward her twin brother, Lance. “Go on, get ready for your act. But be careful. If there’s someone in the audience—” She doesn’t have the finish the sentence. It doesn’t happen often that someone interferes, but many of these acts use Talent in plain sight. The humans don’t notice. Even now, more than a decade after the Emergence, they are easily oblivious to real magic disguised by trickery. Lana and Lance’s quick change act is considered unbelievably good, in part because magic aids the sleight of hand.

There’s a reason they’re one of the best circuses.

Mac exhales and walks out the back of the tent, into the open air beyond. She sits on one of the benches, kicking at cigarette butts that shouldn’t be here on non-smoking grounds.

“It’s okay,” she mutters to herself, flexing her fingers. She has friction burns on her hands, and her chest aches where she rammed into the bar. All of her normal tiny little adjustments were worthless in the surprise of the moment.

She’s not used to aching like this.

“I told you, she’s back here.”

A young voice, and one she doesn’t know.

Mac shoots to her feet, wishes she’d thought to grab a jacket. She crosses her arms as she stands there in her rhinestone studded leotard, sparkling in the mid-afternoon sun.

A boy drags a young man around the edge of the tent, and they both stop several feet away.

“See?” the boy says.

The man pushes his hand back through his hair, messing up short bangs that look like he’s growing out a buzzcut. “Hi. Adelaide. Sorry to bother you, but Conor has something he’d like to say, and he didn’t want to wait until after the show was done.”

“You’re missing the best acts,” Mac says dryly.

“No, I’m not,” Conor says. He walks up to her, his arms crossed as he tilts his head to look up at her. “They start with the best and end with the best, so if we miss the middle it’ll be fine.”

Mac thinks of Lana and Lance, and shakes her head. “You’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue the point. Come back another day and try to sit still.”

“I’m terrible at sitting still,” Conor says. “And I’m sorry I pushed you. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t, always. Dad says I have more magic than fits in my body, and sometimes it trickles out and I wiggle and sometimes it explodes out when I’m scared or angry. And I was scared when I realized you couldn’t reach the bar, so I did something, I guess, and then you Teleported, and I hadn’t realized you were doing that—you were doing that the whole time, right?”

“Only when I needed to.” Mac’s trying to follow the spew of words, and she thinks she has the gist of it. She lowers herself to Conor’s height, which isn’t all that far considering her own short stature. “You realize that what you did could’ve made me fall for real, right?” She turns her hands, palms up, to show him the wood burns. “I don’t usually get hurt when I perform. I’m really good at what I do. Usually when you see a performer screw up, they’re doing it just for show.” She raises a finger, lowers it slowly to point at Conor. “Don’t even think about trying to help Dale with the Wheel of Destiny at the end. Trust me, he might look completely out of control, but he’s fine.”

“I tried to tell him before we came into the tent, but sometimes Conor’s Talent gets away from him.” The young man stands behind Conor, one hand on his shoulder, the other outstretched toward Mac. “I’m Pawel. And I’m sorry as well. I’ve been trying to teach Conor, but sometimes it’s the blind leading the blind, since I’m Emergent myself. Like you.”

Mac takes his hand before the words fully register. She’s still holding on when she drops her gaze, looks away with a rueful smile. “You can call me Mac,” she offers, before Pawel might consider calling her something she hasn’t been named in years.

“Mac,” he echoes, squeezing her hand.

“Oh my God, Dad,” Conor mutters. He pushes them apart, and Mac lets go, realizing she’s been holding Pawel’s hand for longer than she should.

Pawel flushes, cheeks stained rose under a spray of freckles. “Right. Conor, we should go back inside and—”

“I’ll give you a tour of the circus. After the show is over,” Mac offers. Not that that’s hers to offer, but he somehow sounded lonely the way he said that. The blind leading the blind, like he hasn’t had anyone else Talented to talk to. And she can’t imagine that, not after spending the last years with her circus family. “You’ll like them, and you might find someone who can tell you something about raising a Mage. We’ll be gone in a few weeks, when we pull out and move on, but we’ve all got phones. We could talk.” She cuts herself off, because she’s rambling, and she doesn’t know why. “You could talk to them.” She means Lana and Lance. They should be able to help him.

“Oh my God,” Conor mutters again.

Pawel just stands there, pushing his hand through his hair again, that flush rising. “I’m not as young as you think I am,” he says. “Or as clueless.”

“I didn’t think you were that young,” Mac lies. He’s about her age, she thinks, maybe younger. Not old enough to have a kid and if she wonders why he’s claiming to be Conor’s father, she’s not going to ask.

“Twenty-eight,” he says. “My girlfriend had Conor when we were in school. She disappeared. I dropped out to take care of him. It’s been him and me and some well-meaning neighbors in the apartment complex ever since.”

He doesn’t look it. Even when she narrows her gaze, tries to find that age in his eyes, she doesn’t see it. “No family?” She asks. It’s an indelicate question, and they’ve already gone into far more detail than anyone should on circus grounds. Even if he hasn’t explicitly said he knows who she is, he’s implied it. In circus terms, that’s blunt.

Pawel’s jaw goes tight and he shakes his head. “None to speak of.”

Mac just nods, because she hears what he’s not saying. “That’s kind of a common occurrence around here.” She turns from him and beckons; Conor rolls his eyes before approaching slowly, his head tilted as he watches her warily.

“What?” Conor demands.

“Have you ever thought about joining the circus?” Mac responds. She watches Conor, but her attention is on Pawel at her back, and the way his breathing changes at the question. “Because sometimes, when there’s no family to speak of, this is a good place to find a new one. And people like you—like us—fit in pretty well.”

There’s a shout, and Lana waves to Mac from the exit at the back of the tent.

“I have to go back in; curtain call will be soon. If you want to catch the tail end of Dale’s act, duck in the side entrance.” Mac points to where the tent flap is raised, flashing light spilling out from the tent. “And think about what I said. I’ll show you around later.”

“I’ll think about it,” Pawel says.

Mac can’t stay here any longer. She blips from one place to the next, appearing in the tent next to Lana just in time for Dale to almost fall off the top of the Wheel of Destiny. The crowd shouts, and she breathes in air scented with popcorn and cotton candy. For a moment she swears she can taste their excitement.

“So that’s your type?” Lana asks quietly.

He’s a single dad, and she knows almost nothing about him. Mac knows that as honest and open as he was, there are probably a hundred more things he’s still hiding. But she can’t bring herself to shake her head. Instead she denies by implication, saying, “He needs advice from a Mage. The kind of advice I really can’t give him. And he’s on his own.”

“Think he could make an act?”

Mac’s gaze drifts to where Pawel stands on the side, his hand on Conor’s shoulder. Conor is reaching out, fingers spread, and for a moment, Mac sees sparks light the air around him. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “I think he’d find a place here.”

“If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.” Lana touches Mac’s back, and they move forward with the other performers, heading into the ring to wave and bow.

She’s aware of the way Pawel watches her, and she turns and blows a kiss to Conor.

If it’s meant to be, she thinks.

Pawel smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. When Conor waves, there’s a fresh shower of sparks around his fingertips.

No one ever seems to plan to run away and join the circus, but here they are.

Mac’s pretty sure it’s meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me (mostly silent) on Tumblr as [tryslora](http://tryslora.tumblr.com) and on Pillowfort as [tryslora](https://www.pillowfort.io/tryslora). I also write original fiction! If you like my fic, you might like my original twice-weekly series [Welcome to PHU](http://welcometophu.tumblr.com) (also mirroring on Pillowfort at [Welcome to PHU](https://www.pillowfort.io/community/WelcomeToPHU)).


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